Frequently Asked Questions about Developing a Course for ELI
How do I know which courses can be proposed?
Because of the resources involved in developing and maintaining each ELI course, we generally do not develop multiple versions of the same course. So, you should not propose a course that is already offered through ELI. Look at the Fall Schedule of Classes to see nearly every ELI course and check whether the course you are interested in proposing is already offered. If you’d like to also check, before you put together a proposal, whether the course is already in development or otherwise unavailable for proposals, contact Joan Trabandt, Coordinator of Instructional Design and Development, at . If the course you were hoping to develop is already offered through ELI, and you would be interested in teaching a section of the existing course, contact ELI Faculty Liaison Joanna Knoll () to inquire about openings.
How does ELI decide which proposals to approve?
ELI does not have the resources at this time to develop all courses proposed for development. When you submit a proposal, it will be reviewed by a committee (generally including the Director of ELI, the Associate Vice President for Instructional Technology, the Associate Vice President for Academic Services, the Vice President of Instructional and Information Technology, the Coordinator of Instructional Design, and one ELI faculty member). The committee looks in particular for courses with high enrollment potential, courses that help ELI offer more degrees/certificates completely at a distance, and courses that are part of other College or ELI initiatives. In addition, we seek faculty who have Blackboard experience and other needed technical skills, who have taught the proposed course, and who have creative ideas but who are also open to changing their plans as they work with the instructional design team at ELI. Specific supportive comments from your Dean are also important to our evaluation of your proposal.
Will I be compensated for my work developing this course?
ELI generally does not offer compensation for individual faculty members developing a course, just as you likely would not be compensated for developing a new course to offer on campus. (ELI does provide compensation for faculty who participate in team course design projects.) Some Deans choose to provide their faculty with compensation, such as reassigned time, when they are developing an ELI course. Some Deans provide some compensation for their faculty who have developed ELI courses by paying them full workload credit the first time they offer their ELI course, regardless of enrollment. (See below for more on enrollment and workload.)
What are ELI courses like?
Every ELI course is different. However, it is important to understand that a quality distance learning course is more than just a syllabus posted on a website or in Blackboard. Rather, it presents students with a rich learning experience that engages them through a variety of media, that requires them to interact with classmates and their instructor regularly about the course material, and that challenges them intellectually. It goes far beyond reading the textbook and taking tests. Faculty provide students with engaging activities and learning resources including live or recorded video or audio lectures, student group projects, online discussions, videos, interactive learning games, web explorations, simulation exercises, field projects, and more.
What is the timeline for course development and first offering?
Courses approved for development in the fall will be developed during the spring semester and the first part of the summer. The entire course must be complete by one month before the fall semester begins (that is, in mid-July). The course will be offered for the first time the next fall. (Example: courses proposed in Fall 2008 will be developed in Spring and early Summer 2009 and offered for the first time in Fall 2009.)
Courses approved for development in the spring will be developed during the summer and early fall. The entire course must be complete by mid-November. The course will be offered for the first time the next spring. (Example: courses proposed in Spring 2009 will be developed in Summer and early Fall 2009 and offered for the first time in Spring 2010.)
You will be expected to make steady progress on your course throughout this time period. Your course may not be listed in the print version of the Schedule of Classes if you are not making appropriate progress at the time the schedule is printed. It may also be pulled from offering altogether if course development is not moving forward successfully.
What will it be like to develop an online course?
You will be paired with an instructional designer, whose job it is to help guide you through the design process in a way that ensures that your course meets ELI quality standards and best practices in distance learning pedagogy, and that it uses technology appropriately. The process will likely involve group training sessions (where you work with other faculty who are designing courses at the same time) as well as one-on-one work with your instructional designer. You may also need to attend additional training workshops to learn to use the technology tools you have chosen to use in your course (e.g., Centra training or advanced Blackboard training). As indicated in the Memorandum of Understanding included in this packet, participation in course development and technical training is a mandatory part of the course design process.
Most importantly, you should go into the course design process expecting to be challenged to think in new ways about your teaching. Most faculty say that the course design process with ELI gives them new ideas for their campus teaching in addition to helping them develop a richer online course than they otherwise would have. You should also expect that the process will take more time than you might initially expect. Faculty are usually surprised by the amount of work and time development takes. Think of it this way: an online course must be 100% complete before it begins, from the first words of the syllabus to the last question on the final exam. In addition, all the information you would give students orally in your campus sections must be offered in writing in your online courses. So, the course prep time you spend across a whole semester in a face-to-face course must all be completed in advance for an online course.
What if my course needs to have some in-person meetings?
ELI does offer a number of courses in which students attend a handful of in-person meetings (for example, lab sessions for science courses, or class meetings for students to deliver speeches in SPD courses). For an ELI course, in-person class meetings should be kept to a minimum (less than 30% of class time) and should only be used in cases where in-person instruction is really necessary pedagogically. Often, our instructional designers can help you explore technologies (such as Centra or Wimba) that would allow you to meet your instructional goals without asking students to come to campus.
What is it like to teach an online course?
If your course proposal is approved, you will spend your first semester or so with ELI focused on course development. Along the way, you’ll begin to more fully understand what teaching and learning online are like. In addition, once you get closer to the time you will actually begin teaching, you will participate in a detailed orientation/training to get you ready to teach online.
Faculty who teach for ELI generally enjoy teaching online because they interact with each student one-on-one more extensively than is usually possible in face-to-face classes; because they can carefully plan their written communication to convey course materials and guidance to students in ways that oral communication does not always achieve; and because they value learning new things themselves as they explore the many tools and pedagogical approaches particular to online teaching.
It is also important to consider some challenges of online teaching as you decide whether it is right for you, including: (1) most faculty report that online teaching takes more time than classroom teaching; (2) you will not enjoy teaching online if you are not comfortable using email and Blackboard extensively; (3) you need excellent record-keeping and organizational skills to teach well online; and (4) if you teach for ELI and on campus, you will need to carefully manage how to follow the administrative tasks and procedures for two different units (your campus division and ELI).
Do ELI faculty have to be online 24/7?
No. Our expectation is that you will be available and responsive to students five days a week of your choosing. On those five days, you would respond to student emails, check into your Blackboard site and respond to queries and work submitted there, and grade student assignments.
How does an ELI course fit into my normal workload?
Teaching at ELI is part of your workload just as teaching on campus is, and it is subject to your Dean’s approval and the College’s limits on workload in any given semester or year.
One important thing to know about ELI is that while on campus, a course either runs (at full workload) or it doesn’t (no workload), at ELI, workload is generally pro-rated based on enrollment. That is, to put it very simply, if you are teaching a 3-credit course that fills to half its cap, you earn 1.5 workload credits. This complexity can mean that it is difficult to plan for how your ELI course will fit into your workload. It is possible that you could schedule an ELI course as one of your courses in a certain semester and then end up with not enough teaching credits that term because your ELI course did not fill. For this reason, some faculty, for their first few semesters teaching for ELI (while we see how enrollments go the first few times the course is offered), take their ELI course as an overload. Alternatively, some faculty make agreements with their Deans to plan for this variability in the workload credits they might receive from ELI.
Does ELI have different start and end dates than campus classes do?
Yes. ELI has three basic enrollment sessions each semester. The first session begins and ends the same day campus 16-week classes do. The second enrollment session starts (and ends) about 2 weeks later. The third enrollment session starts (and ends) 2 or 3 weeks after that. (We do also have first- and second-eight weeks courses, and a small number of 12-week courses.) Note that this schedule means that some of your ELI sections not only start late, but also continue into the next regular semester. (For example, the third enrollment session in Fall 2008 begins in early October and ends in early February, thus lasting into the normal spring semester.)
Unless enrollments do not warrant, we expect most ELI courses to be offered in all three sessions each term. This is usually accomplished by the faculty member who created the course teaching all three sessions, but sometimes, different faculty members may teach each session.
Where can I get more information?
Feel free to contact Jennifer Lerner, Director of ELI ( or 703-323-3807) for more information.
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